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Marketers haven't quite fulfilled the promise of "one-to-one marketing" and it's only getting harder as buyers become more empowered and unpredictable, Bizo CEO Russell Glass writes. But the rise of data-driven automation centered around customer-relationship management solutions signals the beginning of a battle for supremacy among Salesforce.com, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Google and Adobe. Salesforce has an early edge, but competitors are busily developing proprietary audience-data strategies despite issues with cross-platform integration and looming privacy concerns, Glass writes.

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The cloud marketing space has seen a string of acquisitions, and this article reviews the latest offerings from Salesforce.com, Adobe, SAP, Oracle and IBM as a result. Salesforce.com is a top customer relationship management platform that is focusing on automation, while Adobe is making headway in the execution of ads.

Salesforce.com, which helped reinvent the business application segment with its CRM tools, is hoping it can disrupt the marketing world in much the same way. Big Data has "changed everything," CEO Marc Benioff says. And Salesforce will harness its acquisition of Radian 6 and Buddy Media, as well as more purchases to come, to help marketers anticipate their customers' needs in advance. "The idea is to make a company so customer-focused that the traditional boundaries between advertising, marketing and customer service become obsolete," John Shinal writes.

The socialization of human resources is the focus of the IBM Connect conference this year, writes Alex Williams. IBM has integrated its IBM Connections social software with its Kenexa acquisition, diving into competition with Salesforce.com, Oracle and SAP. IBM is also releasing Social Media Publisher for CMOs interested in ad campaigns via social networks.

Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SAP and other vendors are sure to make headlines in the software-as-a-service market during 2013, Chris Kanaracus writes. Emerging trends this year may include single-sign-on capability for multiple SaaS applications and cloud-based enterprise resource planning apps for manufacturers, Kanaracus writes.

Salesforce.com, which provides sales-force-automation services to hundreds of companies, yesterday launched a new on-demand call center and help desk service. The new center at Supportforce.com will allow clients to use the Internet to establish call centers, help desks and other customer-service systems.